Want to be a tradie?

This Issue This is a part of the Skilling the workforce feature

By - , Build 173

Schools would do well to put more effort into educating students about taking up a building apprenticeship as an attractive alternative to tertiary study, a recent study found.

IN RECENT YEARS, the building and construction industry has struggled to produce enough skilled labour to adequately cope with the sheer demand for construction work in New Zealand.

Push to tertiary education since 1980s

Education reforms in the 1980s and 1990s meant that young people often faced increased expectation by future employers to gain a university education rather than undertake an apprenticeship.

Research found two journeys for apprentices

Considering the industry’s struggle in recent years to recruit skilled labour, research was undertaken to examine how young people were transitioning into apprenticeships.

The research sought to gain insights from young peoples’ transition to apprenticeships to find how the building and construction industry can improve the numbers taking these up.

All of the participants interviewed in this study were in their 20s and had just started or recently completed their apprenticeships. They were from diverse trades, both in and out of the construction industry, such as plastering, painting, electrical, engineering and forestry.

The research found that new apprentices often experience one of two types of journey into an apprenticeship.

Family tradition a clear driver

Some of those interviewed were categorised as having a ‘traditional’ transition into apprenticeship that relied heavily on their close connections to family members already in a trade. This connection provided them with a very clearly defined pathway into their profession, irrespective of the time they spent in secondary education.

For example, the experience of Thomas, a 26-year-old plasterer, is illustrative of those apprentices who always had a clear idea about their future ambitions:

‘I just knew straight away. Even in senior year, I knew. Teachers would ask “Oh, what are you going to do with your life? Where are you going to go? Are you going to uni? Do you want to get UE?” And I pretty much said “Na, I’m going to go into the trades”.’

Knowing someone in a trade provided many of the young people with not only social connections into a trade but helped illustrate relevant behaviours necessary to make a successful transition into a trade. It helped with things like understanding the ‘right’ skills that were needed.

Bradley, a 24-year-old joiner, explained how being around trades was always a key part of his childhood, and this helped in his future decision making:

‘I wanted to be a joiner when I was 10. After 3 o’clock, we’d go to the factory. So, I’d always wanted to be making stuff, but I was never allowed to make stuff or even sweep the floors, yeah, and just Dad did it, so I wanted to do it. Yeah, just always around it. Used to go in the school holidays and work there and clean up and make the odd thing, and just enjoyed it.’

Rocky transitions into a trade

These experiences and social connections, which were so important in helping the future decision-making processes of the apprentices in the first group, were largely absent from the second category of apprentices who had more rocky transitions into the trades.

School leavers see few options

Bradley, 21, now an electrical apprentice, explained that the potential employment pathways out of school were incredibly slim and lacked many options:

‘As you know, you either go to university, or you drop out and work at Maccas …. Pretty much, you end up going to uni because you have to make such a quick decision ...’

Without having an already established social connection to an apprenticeship, Bradley had very few choices as he left school and picked what seemed the best option for someone still unsure of their employment pathway. It wasn’t until after going to university and dropping out after his first year that he made the decision to learn a trade.

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Push towards university

The lack of employment pathways for young people outside of university was not the only issue for the apprentices in this category. Each of these apprentices also dealt with the social pressure within schools that tended to push undecided students towards a university education. Craig, now a 26-year-old engineer, found it hard to resist the push towards a university education:

‘Apart from my engineering teacher who came from a trades background, not a tertiary background, the other teachers, my physics teacher, my English teacher, calculus, all those people, even the sports science side of things, were all pushing tertiary study. All of them. That’s not their fault ... it’s just the way things are …’

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Into trades by luck or timely interventions

Craig’s experience is representative of many apprentices who were missing a social connection to a trade. These apprentices relied on luck or a timely intervention to place them on a pathway to a trade rather than having a social connection into the trades that would have helped establish a clearly defined occupational pathway from a very young age.

Future apprenticeship research

This research helped highlight the importance of close social connections in providing smooth transitions into apprenticeships across a wide variety of trades.

In the absence of these social connections, young people in this study were more likely to focus on further tertiary education rather than pursue an apprenticeship as their primary occupational pathway. Tertiary study, like university, is now the most common pathway for young people leaving school.

Considering the construction industry’s current struggle to recruit young people, future research needs to explore how apprenticeship pathway schemes can leverage the benefits and generate the same level of interest as further tertiary study for young people.

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